Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In 1965, Gor'kov and Eliashberg originally predicted that minute metallic particles should possess dramatically high polarizability, and thus a high dielectric constant, when small enough (i.e., nano-sized) such that their electronic energy levels are discrete. This effect is hereinafter referred to as the “GE effect.” The symmetry of the spherical metallic particles, however, may induce a sufficient depolarization field from electrostatics to wash out the GE effect. This is explained in S. Strassler, et al., “Comment on Gor'kov and Eliashberg's Result for the Polarizability of a Minute Metallic Particle,” Phys. Rev. B, 6:2575 (1972), the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Further study on the GE effect was carried out in M. J. Rice, et al., “Gor'kov-Eliashberg Effect in One-Dimensional Metals?” Phys. Review Lett., 29:113 (1972) (the “Rice publication”), the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein. In this publication, the researchers recognized that one-dimensional metals, such as mixed-valency planar complex compounds of platinum (Pt), might form interrupted metallic strands under sufficient conditions to manifest the GE effect. More recent research, published in S. K. Saha, “Observation of Giant Dielectric Constant in an Assembly of Ultrafine Ag Particles,” Phys. Rev. B, 69:125416 (2004) (the “Saha publication”), the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein, has demonstrated the GE effect in interrupted metallic strands synthesized using modern techniques. In this and other studies including T. K. Kundu, et al., “Nanocomposites of Lead-Zirconate-Titanate Glass Ceramics and Metallic Silver,” Appl. Phys. Lett., 67:2732 (1995) (the “Kundu publication) and B. Roy, et al., “High Dielectric Permittivity in Glass-Ceramic Metal Nanocomposites,” J. Mater. Res., 8:1206 (1993), the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein, researchers have demonstrated giant dielectric responses (on other order of ∈˜1010) in small-scale assemblies of ultrafine metal particles (i.e., metal nanoparticles) under external electrical bias, disordered metal/semiconductor particles without bias, and at various temperatures and frequencies.